The Africa group of countries has agreed on what could be the conference's most innovative proposal so far: creating a science fund for poor countries from the debt relief that was agreed last month by the G8 nations, meeting in Cologne, for the 40 least developed countries.

The proposal was agreed by science and education ministers from Africa at a meeting on Monday (28 June) in Budapest. It will be put to the conference drafting group by Senegal, which represents Africa on the group.

Under the proposal, countries with heavy burdens of debt will be urged to agree to set up a science fund from money earmarked for debt repayments. The repayments will be waived under the plan agreed by the industrialized countries that met in Cologne.

Support for the idea could also come from the 50-member Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), whose ministers also met on Monday (see below). At this meeting, Atta ur Rahman, coordinator-general of the OIC's Ministerial Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (Comstech), proposed the setting up of a separate intergovernmental fund in which countries would be repayed — for example through the commercialization of research — according to the size of their contributions.

Ministers from Africa also agreed that the draft conference documents need to put additional emphasis on two other issues. The first is “that science is the common heritage of mankind, whose results and benefits should be shared equitably”. The second is the need for a more clearly defined mechanism to follow up implementation of the conference resolutions among Unesco's member countries.

Nlend: ‘science must serve all humanity’.

“The idea that some countries are producers of science while others are consumers cannot be allowed to continue,” says Hogbe Nlend, Cameroon's minister for science.

The fund idea has emerged unexpectedly. Many, if not most, conference delegates had come to Budapest expecting little tangible outcome from the meeting. Indeed, some important developed countries have said that they will resist firmly any calls for funds.

This is partly a result of the experience of the last major United Nations science conference, in Vienna in 1979, where a battle between rich and poor countries over a science-for-development fund ended in stalemate. That experience is also believed to be a reason why there is no mention of funds in any of the draft conference documents.

“The draft agenda only deals with [funding] vaguely,” says Nlend. “But for poor countries, the lack of funds is a critical issue.” This is echoed by Rahman of Comstech who said that “without a fund, nothing will happen”.

Nlend reveals that officials from African and OIC countries studied the lessons from Vienna, one of which was not to push too hard for a fund that relies largely on donations from developed countries, but to explore ways in which developing countries can help themselves.